Accra, Aug. 19, GNA - WACAM, a nongovernmental organisation engaged in advocacy in mining communities, on Wednesday asked the Government to come out with a new development paradigm that would be more human-centred instead of policies that focused on resource development. Mrs Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, Director of Training and Research of WACAM, who made the request, explained that the "human specie is the most valuable asset which transforms the resources of any nation to wealth, hence the need to make the human being the centre of all development policies".

Mrs Owusu-Koranteng was delivering a paper prior to the launch of a "Training Manual for Advocacy in Mining Communities" and "WACAM Newsletter".

WACAM is a community based organisation that exists to protect human rights and the environment in selected mining communities in Ghana. The Manual would be the textbook in WACAM's effort at empowering members of the mining communities to stop the abuse of their human rights by mining companies.

Mrs Owusu-Koranteng said the Manual would equip the communities to address issues relating to violations of social and economic rights as spelt out in the Constitution, as well as address the question of environmental degradation resulting from mining operations of multinational companies.

"With our 10 years experience of working with communities, we have realised that there are a lot of capacity gaps. People have absolutely no knowledge about their rights and responsibilities and some of the multinational companies take advantage of the situation to exploit the people."

She said the Manual would help the people to understand their rights and responsibilities and eventually strengthen environmental and economic justice.

Mr Ibrahima Aidara, West Africa Regional Governance Officer of Oxfam America, said: "Most of the time mining affected communities are remote and distant from centres of decision-making and information. The lack of formal education limits their ability to understand decisions. and to influence them."

He expressed the hope that the Manual would be very useful for Oxfam Africa's Educational Initiative programme in terms of knowledge sharing and the building of knowledge-based communities. Mr Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, Executive Director of WACAM, said Ghana had failed to effectively regulate the mining industry resulting in many social, economic, environmental and technical problems.

He noted that the power imbalance in the engagement of the mining communities and the multinational mining companies encouraged the mining companies to play technical games, which went a long way to negatively affect the people in the communities.

Mr Owusu-Koranteng said experiences gained by WACAM after a decade of active advocacy in the mining communities has convinced it that the top-down policy making approach had always failed because policy makers had failed to realise that lasting solutions to development problems could be found if the majority of the people for whom the policies were made were deeply involved in their formulation.

Commenting on the Manual and the Newsletter, he commended Mr Kwadwo Kwarteng, formerly of the Daily Graphic and Mr Boakye-Dankwa Boadi, the Supervising Chief Editor at the Ghana News Agency, for their support in making it a reality.

Ms Joana Manu, Representative of Women in WACAM, said women suffered the most in mining communities because of the domestic work they were involved in.

She, therefore, lauded the launch of the Manual and said it would help the people in rural communities to know their rights. Rev. Fr. Patrick Amos of the Catholic Bishops Conference Secretariat, who launched the Manual and the Newsletter, said he believed that WACAM was fulfilling a constitutional mandate of informing the citizens and expressed the hope that the Manual would go a long way to buttress the democracy that all Ghanaians were enjoying. 19 Aug. 09